Reforming China's Stock Market: Institutional Change Chinese Style

In this article we examine the dual-track pricing system in China's stock market since its inauguration, a legacy of its economic transition and a major source of institutional predation in the market. We then examine the share structure reform initiated in 2005 that sought to eliminate the distortion this predation had elicited. We interpret the reform push as a process of institutional change and focus on the drivers and theoretical explanations of such changes in China's stock market. We thus advance a model for understanding institutional change, Chinese style. We argue that, initially, the institutional arrangement was constructed by the dynamics of transition – the juxtaposition of the Leninist state and the emerging stock market. This provided huge incentives for state corruption in the emerging market. As the market transition proceeded, the societal and political costs of corruption and market distortion also grew, which produced a crisis that eventually attracted the attention of powerful leaders of the party state. We argue from this case that the broader political context in which specific examples of institutional change occur needs to be examined. Specifically, we argue that powerful agents who are external to given institutional environments can play an important role in institutional change, thus highlighting the political dynamics of an authoritarian state amid systemic transition and global integration.     

奏下去吧

最近，我受韩国艺术协会之邀访问了首尔。访问期间我生平第一次观看了“板索里”（Pansori，韩国清唱），这也成为多年来最令我动容的艺术体验之一。虽然名为“韩国清唱”，但这种艺术形式主要是朗诵张力十足的戏剧故事，多半是“演”而不是“唱”。其与众不同之处在于，演出可能会很长一一最长可达8个小时（尽管我观看的那一场演出只有两个半小时）一而且是由一位演员演满全场。